Sentinel celebrates 162 years of publication and service to the Montgomery community through a variety of cultural changes

A reprint of the first issue of the Montgomery County Sentinel from Saturday, Aug. 11, 1855. FILE PHOTO

For 162 years, The Montgomery County Sentinel has provided the residents of the County weekly news coverage from its newsroom in Rockville.

“We are proud to carry on the tradition of independence, and of being a community leader,” said publisher Lynn Kapiloff. “Our commitment to this community has never been stronger.”

The Sentinel remains the only community newspaper still publishing in Montgomery County and has been named the News Organization of the year by the Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia Press Association three out of the last five years.

Under the leadership of current owner Lynn Kapiloff and her late husband Dr. Bernard Kapiloff, The Sentinel became a beacon for Civil Rights and independence. During the 60s The Sentinel’s reporting on “The Giles case” – often referred to as the “’To Kill a Mockingbird’ case of Montgomery County,” led to freeing African Americans charged and wrongly convicted of rape.

But the paper was founded in different times and once stood for far different interests.

Founded in 1855 by Matthew Fields, like many newspapers of the era, The Sentinel began as a partisan publication in a divisive political environment prior to the Civil War in 1861. Issues such as slavery, tariffs, and state's rights were fiercely debated across the nation.

A Montgomery County public school administrator died of a heart attack Monday, school staff confirmed Tuesday.

Joseph Du Boyce would have been the senior class administrator for the class of 2018 at Thomas S. Wootton High School. He served as class administrator for the freshman through junior years of the rising senior class.

On Monday Du Boyce became the second current Wootton administrator to die in the past two years. The school community also mourned the loss of the late Michael Doran, a beloved longtime principal, when he died August 19, 2015.

In addition to serving as an administrator, Du Boyce could be found attending most of the school’s events. He was known to be extremely loud at sporting events such as football.

At press time, Principal Kimberly Bolden was unavailable for comment.

This article will be updated as more information becomes available. Kathleen Stubbs contributed to this story

Rockville City Council member Julie Palakovich Carr filed her paperwork this week to run for District-17 in the Maryland House of Delegates.

Palakovich Carr, a two-term member on the Rockville City Council, said she wanted to run for state government because she believes she can have a greater impact on education, transportation and economic issues at the state level.

“I decided to run because I think it's important to be pushing progressive reforms in Annapolis,” Palakovich Carr said.

CUT: Patrons watched “The Lego Movie” on July 29, 2015 at Montrose Park during the first "Movies in the Parks." The event returns for its third year to Rockville parks, offering free movies in different parks every Wednesday in August. COURTESY PHOTO The drive-in movie theater may have become part of a bygone era, but you can drive or walk this summer to catch a movie in the park.

For the third year in a row, the City of Rockville is presenting four free outdoor films at four different neighborhood parks every Wednesday in August as part of its Movies in the Park series.

“The films are shown on a big inflatable screen, so everyone gets to see,” said Marylou Berg, Rockville’s director of communication.

ROCKVILLE- With three seconds left on the clock James H. Blake’s Ibrahim Lana shot a 3- pointer from the corner to put the Bengals up by 2, and secure the 47- 45 Blake- Quince Orchard victory.

Monday’s first round of the Maryland Elite Varsity basketball championship pitted two 6-4 high school teams, QO and Blake, against each other in a tightly contested match.

“I just needed that shot,” said Lana, who finished with 16 points in the game, “During that whole game I was on and off, but at the end, I just had to flick my wrist on that last shot, and I knew it was good.”

ROCKVILLE – It was a hard-fought game but Magruder fell short on Monday.

Northwest High School standouts Terrence Williams and Norval Black guided the Jaguars to a 70-66 first round playoff victory over the Magruder Colonels in the Maryland Elite Varsity Summer League at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.

Williams, a former Watkins Mill Wolverine, finished with 18 points and Black contributed 14 points but Kolbey Woodard had a key defensive play late in the game that helped trigger the win. Leading by a basket, Woodard made a steal with 3.9 seconds remaining but was fouled and sent to the charity stripe.

ROCKVILLE – Montgomery County Assistant Police Chief Russ Hamill said he first became aware of the severity of the nationwide opioid crisis at a drug summit put on by the Police Executive Research Forum.

At the summit, Hamill met a police chief from a city in the Northeast, who said two of her officers stood by helpless as teenaged, high school cheerleader with a 4.0 grade point average overdosed on opioids. The police chief then told Hamill that the women who died from the overdose was her daughter.

“It drove the fact home, it drove the point home for many of us,” Hamill said. “Now, it don’t matter who’s daughter it is, who don’t matter who’s friends it is, it’s a humanbeing and all human life has extreme value.”

Infamous cavalry statue takes its last ride to Poolesville to stand guard at White's Ferry

Workmen remove the Confederate Cavalry statue to take it to its new resting place near White's Ferry. FILE PHOTO

ROCKVILLE – Friday was a last hurrah for a 104-year-old Rockville statue representing an increasingly more distant past.

After two years of controversy and public debates a County contractor moved Rockville’s Confederate statue Tuesday to its new home at White’s Ferry outside of Poolesville. The statue, depicting a confederate cavalryman – and modeled after a former Rockville mayor, was taken from its home at the old Rockville “Red Brick” Courthouse where it had stayed for many years. The statue arrived at White’s Ferry on Tuesday.

For years Rockville and County residents debated the appropriateness of the statue, which for the last 104 years stood in downtown Rockville as a memorial to the County’s confederate Civil War veterans.

While the statue was the centerpiece of discussion for many Rockville City Council meetings, only about half a dozen County resident gathered on Friday to give the statue a farewell topped with a Champaign toast to a monument of Rockville’s past.

“I actually had relatives that fought for the Confederacy from Montgomery County, so this is actually part of my culture,” said Bethesda resident David King, who is a member of the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.